her everyday life as best she could.
Within a month, Maralies was able to report that her Crohn’s was in remission and her lupus-like symptoms had not flared. With the support of some additional energy medicine tools to keep her feeling safe, she reported after a year that the Crohn’s was gone, as was the lupus.
Not all disconnects from direct experience come from our early years. Even if your sensorimotor phase was joyous and supported, it is useful to ask yourself how directly and fully you are able to experience your life now. As we grow from infant to young child to student to adult, we often end up transferring gratification from the thing itself to a symbol. So instead of feeling satisfaction while learning at school, we anticipate and experience the joy of getting a good grade and symbolic approval from parents and teachers. Instead of feeling deep pleasure and satisfaction with each bite of a good meal, we are busy posting photos of it on Instagram or counting calories to assure ourselves eating it is really on our diet plan. Instead of enjoying a hug and cuddle, we sometimes go through the motions while calculating whether this means our partner has gotten over the fight we had yesterday.
The stress of being cut off from direct encounter can mess up your body’s energy communications. It can cause your body to oversignal needs or cause you to miss signals of enough. So it is useful to drop back into that pure sense of direct encounter from time to time throughout the day. Tune in to things you encounter with all your senses. Explore the now in intimate detail. It can nourish and renew you at a baseline level. This is a crucial building block in how you construct wellness and use the language of energy.
TOTAL IMMERSION
Learning language involves both comprehension and expression.
Young children are totally immersed in a world of language that is spoken to them and surrounds them. They comprehend far more than they are taught directly, learning to distinguish specifics from the whole field of language and communication they are exposed to.
They learn to express themselves by constructing language from the ground up: first by learning to produce sounds, then holophrases (single words that communicate a whole concept), then basic two-word sentences, then telegraphic sentences, then joined sentences that link specifics, then overgeneralizations, and on and on.
In learning the language of energy, it is useful to recognize that you are also going through a similar two-pronged process. Your task is to build both comprehension, deepening your ability to perceive subtle energies in the fields that surround you, and expression, developing your ability to communicate using subtle energies.
Too often people learning energy healing (either for self-help or to work with others) just study methods and techniques. They put tools in their tool kits and miss the essentials of both developing their subtle perceptions and constructing an individualized ability to communicate with energies. It is like memorizing phrases rather than learning to converse.
Fortunately, learning to perceive and speak energy is not difficult. You have already gained fluency in at least one language, so your mind is familiar with the process. And your body already communicates with itself using energy:
•Your mind-body-spirit conducts ongoing consultations that are energetic in nature.
•You communicate energetically with people around you, both consciously and below your awareness.
•You move through various energetic fields or atmospheres that are palpable as you encounter them during your day.
Learning (or remembering) the language of energy is a matter of tuning in, awakening to the constant energetic expressions and exchanges, and letting your instinctive abilities help you to gain skill in active expression.
Your body is designed to perceive energies using all your senses and receptive faculties (which I discuss in chapter 3):
•Seeing, either with your mind’s eye or physical eye
•Hearing, either literally or in your imagination
•Smell
•Taste
•Touch, feeling, and physical sensation
•Direct knowing
•Intuitive hits
•Animal instinct
•Attention, or being drawn to notice something
•Energy shifts, or recognizing changes in pattern or affect
Further, you can communicate with your body’s energies using the following energy vocabulary (which I explore in chapters 4 through 6):
•Touch
•Gesture
•Imagery, symbols, visualization
•Light and color
•Sound
•Rhythm
•Movement
•Breath
•Shapes
•Scent
•Taste
•Intention that helps guide behaviors of subtle energies
•Field energies, including environmental placement and nature
• • • PLAY WITH IT • • •
Find a place in your body that is uncomfortable or catching your attention in this moment. Notice how you tune in to it: Are you feeling your way in? Scanning your body with your mind? Getting a mental image? Perhaps your mind just went directly to the place, or you thought, My left knee. Each of us perceives in unique ways, so it is useful to get to know your go-to style of perceiving.
As you tune in to the place in your body, what sensations is it communicating to you? You might feel pain, tightness, heat, or vibration. You might see a color, hear sounds, or smell something. Open your mind to whatever and however that place in your body is communicating. Some people get images or even messages as that part of the body speaks to them.
Now, review the above list of ways you can communicate with subtle energies. Choose one to experiment with.
Example: When I do this, my attention is called to my left knee because it feels tight and sore; my eyes are pulled there, too. Looking over the list of communication tools, I feel drawn to “rhythm.” So, I listen to my inner being for a moment to see if a rhythm wants to emerge, and the rhythm I hear or feel drawn to is the lub-dub rhythm of the heart.
I tap using this lub-dub rhythm all around the knee. Because it is a heart rhythm, I place my other hand on my heart, intensifying the linkage between my heart lub-dub and the lub-dub I am tapping on my knee. I experiment: Does it feel better when I tap with my fingertips or my palms? Do I want light taps or sharper staccato ones? Or would I rather just hold my knee while playing a strong rhythmic beat on the table
